That Was Easy: Social Security Problem Solved

By JANE GORDON

Published: April 23, 2006

A NUMBER of presidents and untold members of Congress have been unable to figure out how to fix the Social Security system. But they could have called on four students from Staples High School in Westport to do it for them, in less than 14 hours.

That is how long the students were given to collect information, build a mathematical model, write a computer program and calculate the most effective solution to the Social Security problem, no politics involved. The four, all top math performers at Staples, were competing in the Moody's Mega Math Challenge, sponsored by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, a math advocacy group, and the Moody's Foundation, part of the Moody's Corporation that owns Moody's Investor Service.

One member of the Staples team, Elizabeth Marshman, 17, who will be attending Yale in the fall and is considering majoring in biomedical engineering, comes from a family of English majors, she said. ''They don't know what to do with me,'' Ms. Marshman said. ''They were sort of surprised when I said I had to be at school at 7 on a Saturday morning, but they went with it. They didn't realize the magnitude of it.''

Her family soon realized how important the project was, especially on the day Ms. Marshman came home and told them she had just won $5,000 in scholarship money.

''My mom said, 'I can't believe they gave you a problem the government can't even solve,'' said Ms. Marshman, the only girl on the contest team.

The challenge team beat 128 high schools in New York, New Jersey and Fairfield County. ''Some of them have 500 students on their math teams,'' said Michelle Montgomery, the contest coordinator.

Teams from the Bronx High School of Science, Brooklyn Technical High School and Stuyvesant High School, all renowned for high-performing math programs, lost to Staples, whose math-team membership of 12 to 15 seesaws from month to month. Three math team members, Vikas Murali, 17; Andrew Tschirhart, 18; and Ms. Marshman, competed on the Staples Mega Math Challenge Team, along with Miles Lubin, 16, a junior who has been tinkering with computer programs since he was 4 years old.

Math is not typically known for its cliffhanger moments. But the team, which came to school on Saturday, March 4 to work on a solution, offered a few. The students first researched Social Security, which though solvent, is threatened by a number of factors including increasing life spans and a continuing increase in the percentage of retirees in the population.

In 1950, there were 16.5 workers paying into Social Security for every retiree receiving benefits, according to a study done in April 2005 by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. By 2030, the bank estimated, 2.17 workers will pay for every one retiree. By 2044, the Social Security trust fund will be emptied, according to estimates from the Social Security and Medicare boards of trustees.

Team members calculated expected revenue, then expenditures, then devised mathematical functions that would model income and population changes over time, economic growth and other factors. ''By lunchtime we had an idea of where we were going,'' Mr. Lubin said. ''But we didn't have anything concrete yet.''

They debated whether to consider privatization, but decided the subject was too time-consuming and politically sensitive. Mr. Lubin wrote a computer program to process the data they had collected. The program began producing numbers by dinnertime.

Moments before the 9 p.m. deadline, the school's computer filter censored a word that Mr. Tschirhart had used as an inside joke in the title of his contribution to the final paper. He tried twice, unsuccessfully, to send his information to Ms. Marshman, who was compiling work from each student for the final entry. With the deadline nearing, the students told Mr. Tschirhart that appending the information to the e-mail might work. It did (because, the students did not realize, it removed the offensive title). Ms. Marshman included it, and with nine seconds left, hit send. Social Security, with all its troubles, was solved.

Their final answer was actually two: The system could remain solvent well past 2080 if retirees became eligible for Social Security at age 70 or if the Social Security tax rate could be raised to 18 percent, from 15.3 percent, to continue financing the system.

''We had talked about how we were supposed to be presenting this to Congress,'' Mr. Tschirhart said. ''So we tried to do a range of solutions.''

Students involved in the challenge may never see any money from Social Security if Congress doesn't adopt their idea, but they certainly saw the potential for a cash bonus if they won the contest.

Moody's offered up $60,000 in prizes, including a $20,000 scholarship to the winners. The money surely figured in the school's entry into the contest, said Bill Walsh, a mathematics teacher who brought the students pizza for dinner, but was otherwise not permitted to be in the room, per contest rules. He tried to keep track of their progress by periodically peeking through a school window.

''To be really honest, the $20,000 really caught our attention,'' Mr. Walsh said. ''We have many opportunities to compete in a lot of things, but $20,000 does catch your eye.''

Moody's, as an internationally known source for financial research, risk analysis and credit ratings, is no stranger to the power of cash. The company's foundation put up the scholarship money, and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics organized the competition.

''To be part of a situation where you're able to reward kids, recognize kids, attach status and prestige and give them money for being smart -- smart in math -- that's a great thing,'' said Michelle Montgomery, a spokeswoman for the society, which has its headquarters in Philadelphia. ''We went back and forth on the money thing, and settled on those numbers as decent numbers, enough to get people interested, not so much that it would overshadow the integrity of the competition.''

The judging was initially blind, until the judges -- all applied mathematicians with doctorates in their fields -- picked the top six papers. They then heard the six team presentations on April 5 at the Moody's offices on Church Street in lower Manhattan, to determine the order of winners. One hour after the presentations were done, the winners were announced in much the same way contestants on ''American Idol'' are booted off. The lowest vote getter was announced first, then the next, then the next, until two Mega Math Challenge Teams were left, one from Immaculata High School in Somerville, N.J., and Staples.

Immaculata's name was announced, and the Staples cheering section of teachers, parents and students yelled with joy.

Not that the winners are politically na?. ''The thing is, making a solution and modeling is one thing,'' said Mr. Murali, a senior on the team. ''Implementing it is a totally different, politically sensitive issue.''

Photo: The four Staples High students who figured out how to fix Social Security (on one Saturday in March): From left, Vikas Murali, Miles Lubin, Andrew Tschirhart and Elizabeth Marshman. At rear, their faculty adviser, Bill Walsh, left, and Frank Corbo, head of the math department. (Photo by Douglas Healey for The New York Times)